And so it begins...Again!!

Hello there, and welcome to another blog post, my second of 2010 to be precise. I’ve worked out that I’m blogging at an average of one post per month at the moment. I’d like to say this has been because I have been fantastically busy over the last few weeks and that I’ve been living life at 100 miles per hour. But the truth is nothing that exciting has actually happened in that time.
I have been reasonable busy with work, but that has now come to an end as I decided a couple of weeks ago to hand in my notice at the clothes store I was working. A more fantastic bunch of work colleagues I couldn’t have asked for, however what I could have asked for, and undeniably needed was more money, more hours and something a bit more local to Frome. Travelling into Bath every day of the week on the bus is not only expensive but very frustrating. As the service is at best unreliable, and at worst a complete shambles! This was made plainly obvious when several inches of snow fell on Somerset in mid January and all the buses were cancelled.
So I decided what I ultimately need is something closer to home and which is full time, not 25 hrs a week like what I was travelling into Bath for. I also need a car, which I now have in the form of a Fiat Punto.

But see, here’s the thing. You’ve probably all read in the papers that the recession is now officially over and that unemployment is falling. Well I can say from personal experience that the job market is still pretty dire at the moment. Most of the jobs which are available around this way are either only part time, or pay so little they are barely worth getting out of bed for. I actually worked out one of the jobs I applied for paid less than being on the dole. So while there are lots of people out there who are technically working, many aren’t earning enough to get by on.

A friend of mine who works as a builder has just started a new temp job in Westbury, a small town just over the border in Wiltshire. I drove him to work this morning, dropped him off and then drove back to Frome. However, when I got back I discovered there were three missed calls from him, telling me that it turned out they had enough brickies on site that day and that he wasn’t needed. Trust me, employers have never had it so good when it comes to hiring, as they know there are thousands upon thousands of people out there looking for work and will do pretty much anything to pay the bills.

So the job hunt begins again really. Still not a lot of radio work out there so what I’m aiming for is a step on the ladder to becoming a retail manager. I’m hoping to do this by getting back to working for one of the supermarkets I worked for when I was a student and trying to get on one of their training schemes. So I will keep you posted.